French authorities have filed preliminary charges against far-right politician Marine Le Pen on Thursday for the "distribution of violent images" on social media website Twitter.

If convicted, Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front party, could potentially face three years in jail and a 75,000 euro ($90,000) fine.

The tweets, written shortly after the 2015 Paris attacks, showed executions carried out by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Daesh) members.

They included an image of the body of American journalist James Foley, who was decapitated in a widely circulated video by a member of ISIL. Another depicted a captured Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a cage.

Another image showed a man in an orange jumpsuit being crushed by a tank driven by an ISIL fighter. A caption read "Daesh is THIS".